When Drone Whistleblowers are Under Attack,

What Do We Do?

STAND UP, FIGHT BACK!

We honor Stephan, Michael, Brandon and Cian!

These
four former ex-drone pilots have courageously spoken out publicly
against the U.S. drone assassination program. They have not been
charged with any crime, yet the U.S. government is retaliating against
these truth-tellers by freezing all of their bank and credit card
accounts. WE MUST BACK THEM UP!
Listen to them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43z6EMy8T28

PLEASE HELP THEM:

1. Sign up on this support network:www.facebook.com/events/1502272456740302/

**************************************************************
Statement of Support for Drone Whistleblowers
(Code Pink Women for Peace: East Bay, Golden Gate, and S.F. Chapters 11.28.15)

Code
Pink Women for Peace support the very courageous actions of four former
US drone operators, Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland,
and Stephan Lewis, who have come under increasing attack for disclosing
information about “widespread corruption and institutionalized
indifference to civilian casualties that characterize the drone
program.” As truth tellers, they stated in a public letter to President
Obama that the killing of innocent civilians has been one of the most
“devastating driving forces for terrorism and destabilization around the
world.”* These public disclosures come only after repeated attempts to
work privately within official channels failed.

Despite
the fact that none of the four has been charged with criminal activity,
all had their bank accounts and credit cards frozen. This retaliatory
response by our government is consistent with the extrajudicial nature
of US drone strikes.

We must support these former drone
operators who have taken great risks to stop the drone killing. Write
or call your US Senators, your US Representatives, President Barack
Obama, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, and CIA Director John Brennan
demanding that Michael Haas, Brandon Bryant, Cian Westmoreland, and
Stephan Lewis be applauded, not punished, for revealing the criminal and
extrajudicial nature of drone strikes that has led to so many civilian
deaths.

For more information on the 4 Drone Whistleblowers:
https://www.facebook.com/events/1502272456740302/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43z6EMy8T28
(Must see Democracy Now interview with the 4 drone operators)

Save Ashraf Fayadh

Palestinian poet sentenced to death in Saudi Arabia.

Ashraf
Fayadh, Palestinian refugee poet and artist living in Saudi Arabia, has
been sentenced to death by a Saudi court, on charges of apostasy or
abandoning his faith in Islam. The charges appear to be based on his
poetry and writing and also maybe a form of retaliation for posting an
online video showing Saudi religious police lashing a man in public.

Fayadh
is a Palestinian refugee who was born in Saudi Arabia and has become a
leading member of the young Saudi art scene. He was arrested in January
2014, his identity documents confiscated, and held for a lengthy period
without charge. He was then sentenced to four years in prison and 800
lashes; after he appealed; he was re-tried last month and sentenced to
death. He did not have legal representation.

Fayadh is being
sentenced to death after having been jailed for more than 22 months in
the Saudi city of Abha without clear legal charges beyond “insulting the
Godly self” and having “ideas that do not suit the Saudi society.”
These charges are based on the complaint of a reader’s interpretation of
Fayadh's 2008 poetry collection titled, Instructions Within.

“According
to Fayadh’s friends, when the police failed to prove that his poetry
was atheist propaganda, they began berating him for smoking and having
long hair,” reported the Guardian. Fayadh said his poetry book,
Instructions Within, is “just about me being [a] Palestinian
refugee…about cultural and philosophical issues. But the religious
extremists explained it as destructive ideas against God.”

This
is not the first time that Saudi authorities have arrested Ashraf
Fayadh. The poet was detained before after a Saudi citizen filed a
complaint with the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the
Prevention of Vice accusing Fayadh of having “misguided and misguiding
thoughts.” Fayadh was bailed out of jail at the time, only to get
arrested again. According to sources close to Fayadh, the poet has been
denied both visitation and legal representation rights.

Amnesty
international stated, “We condemn these acts of intimidation targeting
Ashraf Fayadh as part of a wider campaign inciting hate against writers
and using Islam to justify oppression and to crush free speech. We
express our solidarity with Fayadh, hoping to increase support for the
poet as well as pressure to release him. Our efforts should come
together to ensure the proliferation of free speech and personal
freedoms. We specifically call on Saudi intellectuals to express
solidarity with Fayadh against Takfiris’ intimidation practices meant to
silence poets, writers, and artists like him. Let the flag of
creativity fly free and remain innovative. Remaining silent towards
Fayadh’s detention is an insult to knowledge, literature, culture, and
thought as well as to freedom and human rights.”

Samidoun
Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network joins the call for the immediate
freedom of Ashraf Fayadh. His imprisonment, persecution and death
sentence by the Saudi regime reflects the deeply reactionary and
far-right role played by the Saudi regime in the region—alongside its
close imperial partners in the United States, Canada and Europe—that
threatens Palestinian and Arab culture, life, and movements and works to
block and suppress any struggle for liberation.

2.
Protest at the Saudi Embassy in your area for freedom for Ashraf
Fayadh. Print signs and materials, and gather outside the Saudi embassy
with Palestine rights activists, artists and others to demand his
freedom. See the list of Saudi embassies here: http://embassy.goabroad.com/embassies-of/saudi-arabia

3.
Contact your government officials. The Saudi regime is a close partner
of the United States, Canadian and various European governments. Demand
that your government pressure the Saudi regime to release Fayadh. In
Canada, Call the office of the Foreign Minister, Stéphane Dion, at
613-996-5789 and demand Canada pressure Saudi Arabia to release Fayadh,
or email: stephane.dion@parl.gc.ca.
In the U.S., call the White House (202-456-1111) and the U.S. State
Department (202-647-9572); demand the U.S. pressure Saudi Arabia to
release Fayadh. In the EU, contact your Member of the European
Parliament—you can find your MEP here:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/meps/en/map.html

Please
also write letters, Facebook posts, emails or send Facebook messages to
your local politicians, newspapers and friends to publicize this dire
case and spread the information about the situation of Ashraf Fayadh.

Urge
Gov. Jerry Brown to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence. Cooper has
always maintained his innocence of the 1983 quadruple murder of which
he was convicted. In 2009, five federal judges signed a dissenting
opinion warning that the State of California "may be about to execute
an innocent man." Having exhausted his appeals in the US courts, Kevin
Cooper's lawyers have turned to the Inter American Commission on Human
Rights to seek remedy for what they maintain is his wrongful
conviction, and the inadequate trial representation, prosecutorial
misconduct and racial discrimination which have marked the case.
Amnesty International opposes all executions, unconditionally.

"The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." - Judge
William A. Fletcher, 2009 dissenting opinion on Kevin Cooper's case

Kevin Cooper has been on death row in California for more than thirty years.

In
1985, Cooper was convicted of the murder of a family and their house
guest in Chino Hills. Sentenced to death, Cooper's trial took place in
an atmosphere of racial hatred — for example, an effigy of a monkey in a
noose with a sign reading "Hang the N*****!" was hung outside the
venue of his preliminary hearing.

Take action to see that Kevin Cooper's death sentence is commuted immediately.

Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence.

Following
his trial, five federal judges said: "There is no way to say this
politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing."

Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.

Tell California authorities: The death penalty carries the risk of irrevocable error. Kevin Cooper's sentence must be commuted.

In
2009, Cooper came just eight hours shy of being executed for a crime
that he may not have committed. Stand with me today in reminding the
state of California that the death penalty is irreversible — Kevin
Cooper's sentence must be commuted immediately.

Kevin
Cooper's case will be the subject of a new episode of CNN's "Death Row
Stories" airing on Sunday, July 26 at 7 p.m. PDT. The program will be
repeated at 10 p.m. PDT. The episode, created by executive producers
Robert Redford and Alex Gibney, will explore how Kevin Cooper was framed
by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department and District
Attorney.Viewers on the east coast can see the program at 10 p.m. EDT
and it will be rebroadcast at 1 a.m. EDT on July 27. Viewers in the
Central Time zone can see it at 9 p.m. and midnight CDT. Viewers in the
Mountain Time zone can see it at 8 p.m. and ll p.m MDT. It will be
aired on CNN again during the following week and will also be able to
be viewed on CNN's "Death Row Stories" website.

Kevin Cooper: An Innocent Victim of Racist Frame-Up - from the Fact Sheet at: www.freekevincooper.org
Kevin
Cooper is an African-American man who was wrongly convicted and
sentenced to death in 1985 for the gruesome murders of a white family in
Chino Hills, California: Doug and Peggy Ryen and their daughter
Jessica and their house- guest Christopher Hughes. The Ryens' 8 year
old son Josh, also attacked, was left for dead but survived.

Convicted
in an atmosphere of racial hatred in San Bernardino County CA, Kevin
Cooper remains under a threat of imminent execution in San Quentin. He
has never received a fair hearing on his claim of innocence. In a
dissenting opinion in 2009, five federal judges of the Ninth Circuit
Court of Appeals signed a 82 page dissenting opinion that begins: "The
State of California may be about to execute an innocent man." 565 F.3d
581.

There is significant evidence that exonerates Mr. Cooper and points toward other suspects:


The coroner who investigated the Ryen murders concluded that the
murders took four minutes at most and that the murder weapons were a
hatchet, a long knife, an ice pick and perhaps a second knife. How could
a single person, in four or fewer minutes, wield three or four
weapons, and inflict over 140 wounds on five people, two of whom were
adults (including a 200 pound ex-marine) who had loaded weapons near
their bedsides?

 The sole surviving victim of the
murders, Josh Ryen, told police and hospital staff within hours of the
murders that the culprits were "three white men." Josh Ryen repeated
this statement in the days following the crimes. When he twice saw Mr.
Cooper's picture on TV as the suspected attacker, Josh Ryen said
"that's not the man who did it."

 Josh Ryen's
description of the killers was corroborated by two witnesses who were
driving near the Ryens' home the night of the murders. They reported
seeing three white men in a station wagon matching the description of
the Ryens' car speeding away from the direction of the Ryens' home.


These descriptions were corroborated by testimony of several employees
and patrons of a bar close to the Ryens' home, who saw three white men
enter the bar around midnight the night of the murders, two of whom
were covered in blood, and one of whom was wearing coveralls.


The identity of the real killers was further corroborated by a woman
who, shortly after the murders were discovered, alerted the sheriff's
department that her boyfriend, a convicted murderer, left
blood-spattered coveralls at her home the night of the murders. She also
reported that her boyfriend had been wearing a tan t-shirt matching a
tan t-shirt with Doug Ryen's blood on it recovered near the bar. She
also reported that her boyfriend owned a hatchet matching the one
recovered near the scene of the crime, which she noted was missing in
the days following the murders; it never reappeared; further, her sister
saw that boyfriend and two other white men in a vehicle that could
have been the Ryens' car on the night of the murders.

Lacking
a motive to ascribe to Mr. Cooper for the crimes, the prosecution
claimed that Mr. Cooper, who had earlier walked away from custody at a
minimum security prison, stole the Ryens' car to escape to Mexico. But
the Ryens had left the keys in both their cars (which were parked in the
driveway), so there was no need to kill them to steal their car. The
prosecution also claimed that Mr. Cooper needed money, but money and
credit cards were found untouched and in plain sight at the murder
scene.

The jury in 1985 deliberated for seven days
before finding Mr. Cooper guilty. One juror later said that if there had
been one less piece of evidence, the jury would not have voted to
convict.

The evidence the prosecution presented at
trial tying Mr. Cooper to the crime scene has all been
discredited… (Continue reading this document at:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/_new_freekevincooperdotorg/TEST/Scripts/DataLibraries/upload/KC_FactSheet_2014.pdf)

This message from the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. July 2015

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

For Immediate Release – Thursday, October 29, 2015

Solitary Prisoners' Lawyers Slam CDCR for Sleep Deprivation

Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition

SAN
FRANCISCO – Yesterday, lawyers for prisoners in the class action case
Ashker v. Brown submitted a letter condemning Pelican Bay prison
guards' "wellness checks," which have widely been viewed as sleep
deprivation. The letter was submitted to United States Magistrate Judge
Nandor Vadas, and calls on the California Department of Corrections
and Rehabilitation (CDCR) to put an end to the checks.

Last
month, prisoners achieved a historic victory in the settlement of
Ashker v. Brown where the indefinite long term solitary confinement was
effectively ended in California, with Magistrate Judge Vadas currently
monitoring implementation of the settlement terms.

The
guards at Pelican bay Security Housing Units have been conducting
disruptive cell checks every 30 minutes around the clock for three
months, causing prisoners widespread sleep disruption. The process is
loud and according to prisoners, "the method and noise from the checks
is torture."

Attorneys representing Pelican Bay SHU
prisoners have just completed extensive interviews with prisoners who
demand that "the every 30-minute checks have to be stopped or people
are going to get sick or worse." In addition, they report that regular
prison programs have been negatively impacted.

"To
sleep is a fundamental human right," said Anne Weills, a member of the
prisoners' legal team and one of the attorneys who conducted the
interviews with prisoners in Pelican Bay. "To take away such a basic
human right amounts to severe torture, adding to the already torturous
conditions of being in solitary confinement."

Most
prisoners report low energy, exhaustion and fatigue. Most state that
they have trouble concentrating. They try to read, but they nod off
and/or can't remember what they have read. Their writing is much slower
("I can't think to write"), and describe the constant welfare checks as
having a negative impact on their mental state.

While
this recent attorney survey was specifically focusing on sleep
deprivation and its effects, prisoners volunteered information about
the negative impact of these frequent checks: yard policy and practice
has reduced access to recreation, access to showers has been reduced,
programs and meals are being delayed, and property for those newly
transferred to Pelican Bay is still being delayed and withheld.

Sleep
deprivation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Prisoners and
their attorneys are demanding that these checks be halted.

Free Albert Woodfox!

On
June 8, 2015 a federal judge granted Louisiana prisoner Albert Woodfox
unconditional release. Albert's conviction had already been overturned
three times - most recently in 2013 - yet every time the state has
appealed.

Today, Albert is still behind
bars after spending four decades in cruel, unjust solitary confinement.
He believes that he and fellow prisoners, Herman Wallace and Robert
King, were first placed in solitary confinement in retaliation for their
activism. All three men were members of the Black Panther Party.
Together, they came to be known as the Angola 3.

It is
time for the State of Louisiana to stop standing in the way of justice.
Call on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal to ensure Albert's cruel and
unjust confinement is not his legacy. Learn more

Amnesty for all those arrested demanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Amnesty for ALL those arresteddemanding justice for Freddie Gray!

Sign and distribute the petition to drop the charges!Spread this effort with #Amnesty4Baltimore

"A riot is the language of the unheard" — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

An
estimated 300 people have been arrested in Baltimore in the last two
weeks. Many have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists, medics and legal observers.

One
individual arrested for property destruction of a police vehicle is
now facing life in prison and is being held on $500,000 bail. That's
$150,000 more than the officer charged with the murder of Freddie Gray.

The legal system has made it clear that they care more about
broken windows than broken necks; more about a CVS than the lives of
Baltimore's Black residents.

They showed no hesitation in
arresting Baltimore's protesters and rebels, and sending in the
National Guard, but took 19 days to put a single one of the killer cops
in handcuffs. This was the outrageous double standard that led to the
Baltimore Uprising.

I
stand in solidarity with those in Baltimore who are demanding that all
charges be dropped against those who rose up against racism, police
brutality, oppressive social conditions and delay of justice in the case
of Freddie Gray. The whole world now recognizes that were it not for
this powerful grassroots movement, in all its forms, there would be no
indictment.

It is an outrage that peaceful
protesters have been brutalized, beaten and pepper-sprayed by police in
the streets, and held for days in inhumane conditions. Those arrested
include journalists and legal observers.

Even the youth
who are charged with property destruction and looting should be given
an amnesty. There is no reason a teenager -- provoked by racists and
justifiably angry -- should be facing life in prison for breaking the
windows of a police car.

The City of Baltimore should
work to rectify the conditions that led to this Uprising, rather than
criminalizing those who took action in response to those conditions.
Drop the charges now!

Sincerely,
[add your name below]

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

CANCEL ALL STUDENT DEBT!

Sign the Petition:

http://cancelallstudentdebt.com/?code=kos

Dear President Obama, Senators, and Members of Congress:

Americans
now owe $1.3 trillion in student debt. Eighty-six percent of that
money is owed to the United States government. This is a crushing
burden for more than 40 million Americans and their families.

I urge you to take immediate action to forgive all student debt, public and private.

URGENT ALERT

MAJOR TILLERY IN

HOSPITAL!

Sometime
yesterday Major Tillery, a 65 year-old man, was rushed to the hospital
from SCI Frackville. Since hearing this yesterday evening through the
prison grapevine, family and attorney have tried to learn more.

Today,
the only thing we have been told by Superintendent Brenda Tritt is
that this was "a routine admission" and Major is "receiving the
appropriate medical attention." Nothing more to to Major Tillery's
daughter, Kamilah Iddeen--not the hospital, the reason for rushing
Major to the hospital, no agreement for family and legal visits.
Major
Tillery has liver disease and a liver shunt, arthritis with chronic
back and hip pain, and a festering skin rash and open sores. Major
Tillery has filed grievance after grievance objecting to the lack of
medical treatment and refusal to renew needed medical devices.

Major
Tillery has been imprisoned for 30 years, 25 in the hole and in the
most severe super max prisons in the country. For prison officials his
crime is his advocacy for other prisoners and leadership capabilities,
including challenging abusive prison conditions and inadequate medical
treatment. He has been subject to retaliation by prison authorities
since he began his successful legal effort to stop the overcrowding and
curb the inhumane conditions in SCI Pittsburgh over 25 years ago. See,
Tillery v. Owens (1990)

In early 2015, Major
complained about the spreading skin disease at SCI Mahanoy, where he
was then imprisoned. He stood up for Mumia Abu-Jamal and other
prisoners who were suffering from this. For his acts of solidarity,
Major Tillery was transferred to SCI Frackville and then put in the
hole on falsified charges. After four months with limited food rations,
deprived of commissary, contact visits and allowed less than one-hour a
day of exercise, Major was released into general population. This was
two months less than his prison sentence of six months in the hole –
the prison's response to an international campaign for Major!

Now
Major is in the hospital. He is not being allowed contact with his
family or attorney. They are not being given any real information on
his condition.

Call prison officials and demand:
Visits
with Major Tillery by his family and lawyer. Full medical information
and treatment should be provided to his family and lawyer.
Stop
the Retaliation Against Major Tillery. He should be exonerated for the
false charges of drug possession and this misconduct removed from his
record.
Transfer Major Tillery from SCI Frackville back to SCI
Mahanoy or to another facility in eastern Pennsylvania to remain near
his family.

Last night Mumia got notice that the
final appeal of his PA Department of Corrections grievance was denied.
Listen to his reaction here.

This denial comes on top of the magistrate Judge's proposal to deny Mumia's right to treatment last week.

Remember--
one of the reasons the Judge gave was her claim that Mumia had not
"exhausted his administrative remedies" or received a final denial of
his request for care. Now he has received that denial.

We
know that withholding Mumia's care is immoral and illegal. We are
confident that we will win this battle in court- but we can't do it
alone.

We have 3 days left to raise $2,948 to support Mumia's legal team in securing his right to hepatitis C treatment!

If
you have already joined us, we're inviting you to ask one friend to
match your gift. We need about 50 more freedom fighters to join us to
reach our goal— and we want you to make that happen with us!

If you haven't given yet- now is the time to make a contribution for Mumia. Will you join us?

Health care is a human right- for Mumia, and for all prisoners. Let's prove it.‪ #freemumia #fight4mumia

Reply
directly to this email to respond to the campaign owner, Prison Radio .
Visit the campaign page to view all comments and updates for this
project.

Help spread the word about the campaign!

PRISONRADIO.ORG

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson
Updates from the New "Team Free Lorenzo Johnson":
Thank
you all for your relentless effort in the fight against wrongful
convictions and your determination to stand behind Lorenzo.

To
garner even more support for Lorenzo Johnson, we have been hard at
work updating the website and developing an even more formidable and
dedicated team. Please take a moment to visit the new site here.

During
the month of July, Lorenzo wrote two new articles for The Huffington
Post titled "When Prosecutors Deny Justice for the Innocent," and "Hurry
Up and Wait for Justice: The Struggle of Innocent Prisoners." In these
articles, Lorenzo discusses the flaws in the criminal justice system,
which he deems is a "serious problem in this country."

Lastly, Lorenzo has a message to you all.

A Letter from Lorenzo:

July 23, 2015
Dauphin County Prison
Harrisburg, PA

Dear Supporters,

I
hope all is well with everyone and your families. As for myself, I'm
still on my journey in pursuit of my vindication. Sorry for my website
being shut down for a couple of weeks. It was being transferred to a new
provider and management. I'm back and will do my best to keep
everything up to speed with what's taking place.

I
would like to thank ALL of my loyal supporters in the U.S. and in the
MANY different counties that have signed on to support my innocence.
Thanks for all of the letters, emails, photos, etc. Like I always say, I
get energy to carry on and inspiration hearing form you, please stay
engaged in my struggle.

As of this moment, nothing has
changed, but – the continued delay tactics are constantly being used by
my prosecutor, Deputy Attorney General William Stoycos. With the
mounting of evidence that supports my innocence and police and
prosecution misconduct claims that is steadily piling up, you would
think that I would be having a couple of evidentiary hearings on my
actual innocence appeal that have been pending since August 5, 2013.

At
the time of this writing, I've been moved from SCI-Mahanoy to Dauphin
County Prison and locked down for 23 hours and 40 minutes a day. In the
20 minutes I get to come out, I get to take a shower and make a short
call. Prosecutor Stoycos had me moved so I can be a witness in his
attempt to have my codefendant Corey Walker's attorney removed from
representing him. How dare he call into question an attorney who is
seeking justice for her client, when prosecutor Stoycos himself violated
multiple constitutional rights of mine and Mr. Walker, that led to us
being in prison for 20 years and counting.

Prosecutor
Stoycos is continuously abusing his power and his endless resources he
has at his disposal. He is not tough on crime, he's tough on Innocent
Prisoners. Prosecutor Stoycos is doing everything in his power to
prevent justice from taking place. I encourage everyone to continue to
speak out against my nightmare, invite others to get involved by going
to my website and signing my Freedom Petition and whatever else they're
willing to do.

On a positive note, I just enrolled in
warehouse management trade and started on July 13th. Unfortunately,
you're only allowed to miss a couple of days and Prosecutor Stoycos had
me temporarily transferred on July 14th … It's extremely hard on Lifers
to get into these trades due to the fact that Lifers are placed at the
back of the list of ALL vocational classes. I try to further my
education every chance I get, so when I do come home, I will be
certified in different work.

The month of the hearing
has come and left, without me being brought to the courthouse … I'm one
of MANY innocent prisoners who endures this non-stop madness in our
pursuit of Justice and Freedom. Now that my webpage is almost caught up
to speed, I promise prompt updates and as everyone knows that contacted
me directly, I personally reply to those in the states and out of the
country. For those who can make a financial contribution, everything
counts. Take care and let's continue to fight until we achieve Freedom,
Justice, and Equality for all innocent prisoners.

"The Pain Within"

Free the Innocent
Lorenzo "Cat" Johnson

[Note: Lorenzo has since been transferred back to SCI Mahanoy and can be reached at his usual address.]

Thank
you all for reading this message and please take the time to visit the
new website and contribute to Lorenzo's campaign for freedom!

On
December 15, 2014 the Rev. Edward Pinkney of Benton Harbor, Michigan
was thrown into prison for 2.5 to 10 years. This 66-year-old leading
African American activist was tried and convicted in front of an
all-white jury and racist white judge and prosecutor for supposedly
altering 5 dates on a recall petition against the mayor of Benton
Harbor.

The prosecutor, with the judge's approval,
repeatedly told the jury "you don't need evidence to convict Mr.
Pinkney." And ABSOLUTELY NO EVIDENCE WAS EVER PRESENTED THAT TIED REV.
PINKNEY TO THE 'ALTERED' PETITIONS. Rev. Pinkney was immediately led
away in handcuffs and thrown into Jackson Prison.

This is an outrageous charge. It is an outrageous conviction. It is an even more outrageous sentence! It must be appealed.

With your help supporters need to raise $20,000 for Rev. Pinkney's appeal.

Checks
can be made out to BANCO (Black Autonomy Network Community
Organization). This is the organization founded by Rev. Pinkney. Mail
them to: Mrs. Dorothy Pinkney, 1940 Union Street, Benton Harbor, MI
49022.

Donations can be accepted on-line at bhbanco.org – press the donate button.

For information on the decade long campaign to destroy Rev. Pinkney go to bhbanco.org and workers.org(search "Pinkney").

I
am now in Marquette prison over 15 hours from wife and family, sitting
in prison for a crime that was never committed. Judge Schrock and Mike
Sepic both admitted there was no evidence against me but now I sit in
prison facing 30 months. Schrock actually stated that he wanted to make
an example out of me. (to scare Benton Harbor residents even more...)
ONLY IN AMERICA. I now have an army to help fight Berrien County. When I
arrived at Jackson state prison on Dec. 15, I met several hundred
people from Detroit, Flint, Kalamazoo, and Grand Rapids. Some people
recognized me. There was an outstanding amount of support given by the
prison inmates. When I was transported to Marquette Prison it took 2
days. The prisoners knew who I was. One of the guards looked me up on
the internet and said, "who would believe Berrien County is this
racist."

Background to Campaign to free Rev. Pinkney

Michigan
political prisoner the Rev. Edward Pinkney is a victim of racist
injustice. He was sentenced to 30 months to 10 years for supposedly
changing the dates on 5 signatures on a petition to recall Benton Harbor
Mayor James Hightower.

No material or circumstantial
evidence was presented at the trial that would implicate Pinkney in the
purported5 felonies. Many believe that Pinkney, a Berrien County
activist and leader of the Black Autonomy Network Community Organization
(BANCO), is being punished by local authorities for opposing the
corporate plans of Whirlpool Corp, headquartered in Benton Harbor,
Michigan.

In 2012, Pinkney and BANCO led an "Occupy the
PGA [Professional Golfers' Association of America]" demonstration
against a world-renowned golf tournament held at the newly created Jack
Nicklaus Signature Golf Course on the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The
course was carved out of Jean Klock Park, which had been donated to the
city of Benton Harbor decades ago.

Berrien County
officials were determined to defeat the recall campaign against Mayor
Hightower, who opposed a program that would have taxed local
corporations in order to create jobs and improve conditions in Benton
Harbor, a majority African-American municipality. Like other Michigan
cities, it has been devastated by widespread poverty and unemployment.

The
Benton Harbor corporate power structure has used similar fraudulent
charges to stop past efforts to recall or vote out of office the racist
white officials, from mayor, judges, prosecutors in a majority Black
city. Rev Pinkney who always quotes scripture, as many Christian
ministers do, was even convicted for quoting scripture in a newspaper
column. This outrageous conviction was overturned on appeal. We must do
this again!

To sign the petition in support of the Rev. Edward Pinkney, log on to: tinyurl.com/ps4lwyn.

New Action--write letters to DoD officials requesting clemency for Chelsea!

Secretary of the Army John McHugh

President Obama has delegated review of Chelsea Manning's clemency appeal to individuals within the Department of Defense.

Please
write them to express your support for heroic WikiLeaks'
whistle-blower former US Army intelligence analyst PFC Chelsea
Manning's release from military prison.

It is
important that each of these authorities realize the wide support that
Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning enjoys worldwide. They need to be
reminded that millions understand that Manning is a political prisoner,
imprisoned for following her conscience. While it is highly unlikely
that any of these individuals would independently move to release
Manning, a reduction in Manning's outrageous 35-year prison sentence is
a possibility at this stage.

The
letter should focus on your support for Chelsea Manning, and
especially why you believe justice will be served if Chelsea Manning's
sentence is reduced. The letter should NOT be anti-military as this
will be unlikely to help.

A suggested message:
"Chelsea Manning has been punished enough for violating military
regulations in the course of being true to her conscience. I urge you
to use your authorityto reduce Pvt. Manning's sentence to time
served." Beyond that general message, feel free to personalize the
details as to why you believe Chelsea deserves clemency.

Consider
composing your letter on personalized letterhead -you can create this
yourself (here are templates and some tips for doing that).

A comment on this post will NOT be seen by DoD authorities–please send your letters to the addresses above

This
clemency petition is separate from Chelsea Manning's upcoming appeal
before the US Army Court of Criminal Appeals next year, where Manning's
new attorney Nancy Hollander will have an opportunity to highlight the
prosecution's—and the trial judge's—misconduct during last year's trial
at Ft. Meade, Maryland.

Help us continue to cover 100% of Chelsea's legal fees at this critical stage!

A
uniformed New York City police officer shot and killed an unarmed man
on Tuesday after a car chase that began in the Bronx ended with a foot
pursuit and a confrontation in a wooded area of Yonkers just off the Saw
Mill River Parkway, the authorities said.A law enforcement official
identified the fatally wounded man as Miguel Espinal, 36, who a relative
said had been driving his father’s car on Tuesday.

“No weapon
has been recovered,” said Stephen Davis, the chief spokesman for the New
York Police Department, who added that the circumstances that led to
the shooting remained under investigation.

The police chase began
shortly before noon, when two officers from the 50th Precinct in the
Bronx, on patrol in a marked car, saw a gray 2009 Nissan Z driving
erratically and began to follow it. The officers tried to pull the car
over at 242nd Street and Broadway; instead it was driven off at high
speed, officials said. The officers followed the car but lost sight of
it on the parkway, just over the border in Westchester County.

When
they spotted the Nissan again, it was coming back toward them, going
against traffic and heading southbound on the northbound side of the
roadway, the officials said. It passed them, they said, then crashed
into a median and three other vehicles a short distance away.

At
that point, the officials said, Mr. Espinal climbed out the window,
crossed three lanes of traffic, jumped a guardrail and fled on foot into
the woods of Tibbetts Brook Park, as the officers circled back in their
car. Officials said a second man in the Nissan, whom a law enforcement
official identified as Akeem Smith, 25, was injured in the crash and
taken into custody.

Mr. Smith is on federal probation on a drug
charge, said Richard B. Lind, his lawyer in the case. “He was a mule,”
Mr. Lind said.

One driver on the roadway suffered minor injuries
in the crash, said Kieran O’Leary, a spokesman for the Westchester
County Department of Public Safety, which is leading the police
investigation.

Representatives from the New York attorney
general’s office, which now investigates all killings by the police in
the state in which a suspect may have been unarmed, and the Westchester
district attorney’s office were at the scene, Mr. O’Leary said.

It
was not immediately clear which of the two officers — identified by
officials as Garthlette James and Romeo Francis — fired. Neither had
been involved in a prior shooting while on duty, officials said.

A
second law enforcement official said the shooting took place after a
confrontation roughly 75 feet from where the Nissan crashed, down a
steep rock embankment in a wooded gully. Both officials spoke on the
condition of anonymity to discuss the early details of the preliminary
investigation.

“One shot was discharged from one New York City
police officer’s weapon,” George Longworth, the commissioner of the
county’s public safety agency, said at a news conference.

Mr. Espinal was pronounced dead at the scene.

Soon
after the crash, at 12:22 p.m. the Yonkers Police Department issued an
alert stating that a portion of the winding parkway had been shut down
as its officers and those from the New York Police Department searched
for a suspect who had fled into the park and “may also be armed.”

The
second official said at least one witness told the police after the
shooting that the suspect had possessed a gun, but the official
cautioned that it was not clear whether the city officers had heard
anything about a weapon when they gave chase in the woods; neither had
been interviewed as of Tuesday evening.

Mr. Espinal’s uncle,
Carlos, who lives in Florida, said that he had spoken to his sister, Mr.
Espinal’s mother, in a phone conversation on Tuesday afternoon and that
she had told him that Mr. Espinal had taken his father’s car to drive.
“She sounded fine,” he said of the conversation.

He said it had
been many years since he had seen Mr. Espinal, who grew up in Queens and
had served two terms in New York State prison, one for robbery and a
later one for burglary. He said he was unaware of his nephew’s criminal
history.

Mr. Espinal had open warrants in Florida for assault and
burglary, according to a law enforcement official, and a listed address
in Boca Raton.

Several of Mr. Espinal’s relatives gathered at
his mother’s apartment in Jamaica, Queens, on Tuesday night, saying they
had been informed of the shooting but not told of his death. His
mother, Maria Espinal, said he did not live in New York City. “He lived
in Florida,” she said.

According to public records, a Suffolk
County man filed a federal civil rights suit in March against Officer
Francis and several other officers, claiming they had used excessive
force during an arrest in Queens, for which the charges were later
dismissed.

“It is an active case so I cannot comment on his
direct involvement, but he was the arresting officer,” said the
plaintiff’s lawyer, Elizabeth Crotty, speaking of Officer Francis, an
eight-year veteran of the department.

Neither officer could be reached by phone for comment on Tuesday.

“He’s
a great cop,” Denise James, the mother of Officer James, who has been
on the job for just under four years, said of her son in a brief phone
interview. “He’s out there to protect the people.”

Helicopters
hovered in the air above the Saw Mill River Parkway where police lights
flickered near Wendover Road on Tuesday evening. On the northbound side
of the parkway, the gray Nissan, its front smashed, sat up against a
white Yukon, both facing north.

Isabel Ross, 54, whose house
looks out on the parkway through a thin stretch of trees, said she had
heard the crash and at first she thought it was just “another accident,”
like one that occurred there a few weeks ago.

“And we were like,
‘O.K.,’ ” Ms. Ross said. “But we’re not seeing the ambulance or
anything. More cops and more cops and more cops coming. And we realized,
‘O.K., it’s something else.’ ”

Reporting was contributed by Angela Macropoulos, Benjamin Mueller, Noah Remnick and Eli Rosenberg, and research by Doris Burke.

DuPont and Dow Chemical, with more than three centuries of history between them, said on Friday
they had agreed to merge, in one of the biggest deals of the year.The
combined company, which would be known as DowDuPont, would result from
an all-stock merger of equals. Once the two are combined, they plan to
split into three separate companies, consisting of agricultural
chemicals, specialty products and materials, like plastics.

Dow
also said on Friday that it planned to restructure its ownership with
Dow Corning by becoming a full owner, up from a 50-50 joint venture.

Joining
together to break into three separate companies later would give Dow
and DuPont the ability to choose the best products in their research
pipeline and shutter the rest, according to a note by Jeffrey Stafford,
an analyst with Morningstar.

Job reductions are expected to
result from the merger. Dow employs 53,000, while DuPont had 63,000
employees as of the end of 2014. The companies did not mention layoffs
in their announcement, but DuPont, in a separate statement,
said it expected to record a charge before taxes of $780 million,
consisting of roughly $650 million in employee separation costs. DuPont
said 10 percent of its global work force would be affected.

Despite
the eventual breakup, the deal would undergo rigorous antitrust
scrutiny for all three companies, particularly the agricultural
chemicals company.

The two companies, which generated a combined
$92 billion in sales, would be the second-largest chemical company in
terms of revenue after BASF of Germany. In their statement, the
companies said they would have a combined market capitalization of
approximately $130 billion at announcement. Under the merger’s exchange
ratio, DuPont shareholders would receive $70.38 a share, based on
Thursday’s closing prices, or a total of $61.7 billion.

“This
transaction is a game-changer for our industry and reflects the
culmination of a vision we have had for more than a decade to bring
together these two powerful innovation and material science leaders,”
Andrew N. Liveris, Dow’s chairman and chief executive, said in the
statement.

Mr. Liveris would become executive chairman of the
combined company, while Edward D. Breen, the chief executive of DuPont,
would become chief executive of DowDuPont. The board of the new company
would have 16 directors, evenly divided between current Dow and DuPont
directors.

The deal appears to be a rare example of a true merger
of equals. Not only would the board be split evenly, but shareholders
of each company would hold roughly 50 percent of DowDuPont.

Under
the terms of the merger, Dow shareholders would receive one share of
the new combined company for every one of their shares, while DuPont
shareholders would receive 1.282 shares each.

The merger would
cap an extraordinary year in deal-making. More than $4 trillion worth of
deals have been struck so far this year, overtaking the 2007 as the
busiest year for acquisitions on record.

The transaction between
Dow Chemical and DuPont follows a push by investor activists, who have
called for both companies to find better ways to return shareholder
value.In May, DuPont successfully repelled Trian Fund Management’s Nelson Peltz,
although after the proxy battle, the chief executive, Ellen J. Kullman,
quickly departed. She was replaced by Mr. Breen, who was previously the
chief executive of Tyco, where he oversaw its separation into three
separate companies.

The companies have two of the best-known
names in American corporate history. Dow was founded in 1897 as a bleach
producer in Michigan. DuPont was founded in 1802 in Delaware by
Éleuthère Irénée du Pont, a French political economist who had fled to
the United States during the French Revolution.

The new company would have dual headquarters in Wilmington, Del., and Midland, Mich.

A
group of Irish women who have traveled abroad to have abortions posted
images of their faces online on Thursday as part of a new social media
campaign to destigmatize the procedure and build support to change the
law that makes it nearly impossible to legally terminate a pregnancy in
Ireland.

Images of 11 women appear on the home page of the new website, called the X-ile Project, along with a statement
that encourages more women who felt cast out by their homeland at a
time when they needed support to add their portraits to the gallery.

“Our
objective is to give a much-needed face to women who have effectively
been exiled from Ireland and ignored due to unduly strict abortion
laws,” the women write.

“It is estimated that 12 women a day on
average travel outside of Ireland to access abortion services,” two of
the activists behind the project, Laura Lovejoy and Julie Morrissy,
explained in an email. “Almost everyone in Ireland knows someone who
has been forced to travel for an abortion, although for many the stigma
prevents them from talking about it.”

“In showing these images,
we aim to demonstrate that those who choose to travel to have an
abortion are responsible, ordinary women who can and should be able to
make important decisions about their own lives,” they added.

The women also said that the project’s name was a reference to a 1992 case in which a suicidal 14-year-old rape victim
(publicly identified only as “X”) was blocked from travelling to
Britain for an abortion by the attorney general of Ireland. After the
girl’s parents appealed the travel ban, Ireland’s Supreme Court
overturned it, ruling that abortion was permitted in cases in which the
pregnancy poses a threat to a woman’s life.

After the site launched, one of the participants, Tara Flynn, an actress and comedian, encouraged other women to take part.

Abortion
rights activists, who say that more than 170,000 Irish women have
traveled outside the country to have abortions in the past four decades,
are pressing for a referendum to repeal a constitutional amendment
passed in 1983 that blocks the legalization of abortion.

As many as 10,000 supporters of a referendum took part in a March for Choice in Dublin in September.

As The Guardian reports,
abortion could be a central issue in Ireland’s next general election,
expected early next year, because the Irish Labour Party could make a
referendum on the issue a condition of joining any new coalition
government.

Still, there is passionate opposition to any change among Irish conservatives. Senator Jim Walsh denounced what he called “the abortion holocaust” taking place outside Ireland in remarks on Thursday.

In May, Mr. Walsh suggested
that the money spent on a referendum that removed the country’s ban on
same-sex marriage would have been better spent “to provide free H.I.V.
testing to people who are homosexual.”

Andrew Rios’s seizures began when he was 5 months old and only got worse. At 18 months, when an epilepsy medication resulted in violent behavior, he was prescribed the antipsychotic Risperdal, a drug typically used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
in adults, and rarely used for children as young as 5 years.When Andrew
screamed in his sleep and seemed to interact with people and objects
that were not there, his frightened mother researched Risperdal and
discovered that the drug was not approved, and had never even been
studied, in children anywhere near as young as Andrew.

“It was
just ‘Take this, no big deal,’ like they were Tic Tacs,” said Genesis
Rios, a mother of five in Rancho Dominguez, Calif. “He was just a baby.”

Cases like that of Andrew Rios, in which children age 2 or
younger are prescribed psychiatric medications to address alarmingly
violent or withdrawn behavior, are rising rapidly, data shows. Many
doctors worry that these drugs, designed for adults and only warily
accepted for certain school-age youngsters, are being used to treat
children still in cribs despite no published research into their
effectiveness and potential health risks for children so young.

Almost
20,000 prescriptions for risperidone (commonly known as Risperdal),
quetiapine (Seroquel) and other antipsychotic medications were written
in 2014 for children 2 and younger, a 50 percent jump from 13,000 just
one year before, according to the prescription data company IMS Health. Prescriptions for the antidepressant fluoxetine (Prozac) rose 23 percent in one year for that age group, to about 83,000.

The
company’s data does not indicate how many children received these
prescriptions (many children receive several prescriptions a year), but
previous studies suggest that the number is at least 10,000. IMS Health
researched the data at the request of The New York Times.

The
data did not indicate the condition for which these prescriptions were
written. Doctors are generally free to prescribe any medication for any
purpose they see fit, so some drugs can occasionally be used in unproven
and debatable ways. But the volume and rapid rise in psychotropics such
as antipsychotics and antidepressants in children 2 and younger suggest a trend.

In
interviews, a dozen experts in child psychiatry and neurology said that
they had never heard of a child younger than 3 receiving such
medication, and struggled to explain it. They presumed that parents and
doctors, probably desperate and well meaning, were trying to alleviate
thrashing temper tantrums
— the kind that get children kicked out of day care — or an overly
depressed disposition, like being strikingly inhibited, nonverbal or
lethargic.

“People are doing their very best with the tools available to them,” said Dr. Mary Margaret Gleason,
a pediatrician and child psychiatrist at Tulane University School of
Medicine. “There’s a sense of desperation with families of children who
are suffering, and the tool that most providers have is the prescription
pad.”

But Dr. Gleason said that children with ages measured in
months had brains whose neurological inner workings were developing too
rapidly, and in still unknown ways, to risk using medications that can
profoundly influence that growth. She said the medications had never
been subject to formal clinical trials in infants and toddlers largely
because of those dangers.

“There are not studies,” Dr. Gleason said, “and I’m not pushing for them.”

Dr.
Martin Drell, former president of the American Academy of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatry, said he was “hard-pressed to figure out what the
rationale would be” for the prescriptions. Similarly taken aback, some
experts wondered if the medicine was never actually consumed by the
child, or if it was issued in the name of a child covered by Medicaid but in fact taken by an ill parent who was uninsured.

“But
where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Dr. Drell said. “For the protection
of kids, we should evaluate this. We should identify who these cases
are. Maybe it’s not 10,000, but I’ll be unhappy if it’s even in the
hundreds.”

Most experts suspected that the trend of medicating
younger and younger children for suspected psychiatric disorders was
trickling down to very young children. Last year, a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that health care providers had given a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder to at least 10,000 children age 2 or 3 and then prescribed medications such as Adderall outside American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines.

“I think you simply cannot make anything close to a diagnosis of these types of disorders in children of that age,” said Dr. Ed Tronick,
a professor of developmental and brain sciences at the University of
Massachusetts Boston. “There’s this very narrow range of what people
think the prototype child should look like. Deviations from that lead
them to seek out interventions like these. I think it’s just nuts.”

Prozac is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for depression in children 8 and older and for obsessive compulsive disorder in those age 7 and older. Most antipsychotics, which treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, are indicated only for children 10 and older. Risperdal is approved for children as young as 5, but only for irritability associated with autism.

Some
other psychiatric medications, such as the antianxiety drugs Valium or
Klonopin, are widely accepted to control intractable seizures
in the very young. Although their effects on the young brain remain
unknown, stopping a child’s seizure warrants their occasional one-time
use, said Dr. Amy R. Brooks-Kayal, the head of pediatric neurology at Children’s Hospital Colorado and president of the American EpilepsySociety.Antidepressants
and antipsychotic medications, however, have no established use in
young people beyond tempering chronically disruptive behavior, experts
maintained, suggesting that the drugs were probably used for that
purpose.

The American Academy of Pediatrics,
the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, and the
American Academy of Neurology have no guidelines or position statements
regarding use of antidepressants and antipsychotics in children younger than 3.

Finding
specific examples of such children taking the drugs can be difficult,
because of family privacy concerns or because the practice remains
controversial. IMS Health records but does not release the names of
prescribing physicians.

Mrs. Rios said that after Andrew began
taking the epilepsy medication felbamate, he became strikingly erratic
and aggressive: He pushed his siblings down and destroyed toys. She said
that Andrew’s neurologist, at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Dr.
Lily Tran, then prescribed Risperdal, medication that can temper severe mood swings in older children.

Andrew
took the medication for four months before his mother decided it was
causing harmful side effects — behavior he had never shown before — and
took him off it. “Everything became worse,” Mrs. Rios said.

Dr. Tran declined an interview request.

The
use of Risperdal for children has been hotly debated among child
psychiatrists, with some experts — many financially backed by the
pharmaceutical industry — citing positive effects among suffering young
people, and others criticizing their use as shortsighted responses to
complex problems.

“There are behavioral ways of working with the problems rather than medication,” said Dr. Tronick, who runs a program
that teaches health care providers to assist families with troubled
children. “What is generating such fear and anger and withdrawal in the
child? What is frustrating or causing stress in the parent? These are
the things that have to be explored. But that takes time and money.”

Many
experts say that the rise in the use of all psychotropics in children
of all ages derives from the scarcity of child psychiatrists — only 8,350
practice in the United States, many of them with long waiting lists and
higher cost than a family’s established pediatrician. Those
pediatricians receive little training in child psychiatry but are then
asked to practice it.

San
Francisco has become the latest city where protesters are demanding the
resignation of the police chief after the death of a young black man at
the hands of the police.

Similar calls have been made by activists in Ferguson, Mo., Minneapolis, Baltimore and Chicago after deaths in those cities.

“Its
universal. Ferguson is here,” the Rev. Amos C. Brown, president of the
San Francisco N.A.A.C.P., said in a phone interview Thursday. “It’s all
over this country. It’s time this country recognize it. ”

Protesters,
outraged over the death last week of Mario Woods, 26, who was shot at
least 15 times by police officers, spilled out of a packed hearing room
in San Francisco’s City Hall on Wednesday, chanting “No justice, no
peace.”

The protest temporarily shut down a meeting of the city’s
police commission as the crowd called for Chief Greg Suhr to step down.

Mr.
Woods was shot Dec. 2 after witnesses saw him shouting at people and
mumbling to himself on a street in the Bayview neighborhood. A short
time later, the police said, he stabbed a bystander in the arm.

Cellphone videos
of the police response show a stooped Mr. Woods shuffling along a wall
as at least seven officers surround him, yelling, with their guns drawn.

The
police said Mr. Woods did not comply when told to put down a knife.
Officers used pepper spray and a beanbag gun in an attempt to subdue
him.

The videos show an officer step in front of Mr. Woods, who
is walking away from the other officers, in an apparent attempt to stop
him. Moments later, the officer fires at Mr. Woods, followed by shots
from the other officers. Mr. Woods was pronounced dead at the scene, the
police said.

Chief Suhr drew criticism when he told a meeting of
about 100 people a few days after the shooting that the video showed
that Mr. Woods was threatening the officer.

He said that the
officer, “fearing for his safety,” had fired “in defense of himself, and
the other four officers fired in defense of that officer,” according to
The San Francisco Examiner.

At the meeting of the commission — a
citizen panel appointed by the mayor to oversee police accountability —
angry crowds filled the room and overflow rooms. Chief Suhr told the
commission he had contacted other police departments to learn better
practices, and intended to train officers in de-escalation techniques
that could avoid future shootings.

He said he would also push for officers to be able to carry nonlethal stun guns, something San Francisco residents have repeatedly resisted.

But protesters say the chief has been slow to respond to concerns from black residents, and many want him to resign.

“The
feeling in the community is very heated; it’s tense,” said Mr. Brown,
who is also a pastor at a local Baptist church. “If the chief cannot
re-establish trust, he needs to leave,” he said.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

6) John Trudell, Outspoken Advocate for American Indians, Is Dead at 69

John
Trudell, whose outspokenness and charisma made him a leading advocate
of Native American rights, and who channeled his message of righteous
defiance into poetry and songwriting, died on Tuesday at his home in
Santa Clara County, Calif. He was 69.The cause was cancer, said Cree
Miller, the trustee of Mr. Trudell’s estate.

Mr. Trudell, a
Santee Dakota, was national chairman of the American Indian Movement
during much of the 1970s, a turbulent stretch in the relationship
between Native American activists and the federal government.

His
tenure began after the episode at Wounded Knee, S.D., where, in
February 1973, Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge reservation, incensed
by tribal corruption, and American Indian Movement activists, protesting
the government’s treatment of their people, occupied the town in a
71-day standoff with federal marshals and F.B.I. agents.

Three
men — Bob Robideau, Darelle Butler and Leonard Peltier — were tried in
the killing of two agents during a confrontation in Oglala, S.D., two
years later.

Mr. Trudell — “the most eloquent speaker in the
Movement,” as Peter Matthiessen wrote in “In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,”
his 1983 book about the siege — held community meetings in Cedar
Rapids, Iowa, where the trial of Mr. Robideau and Mr. Butler was held,
and he testified for the defense. The two men were acquitted. Mr.
Peltier, tried later, was convicted and remains in prison.

But
well before that, Mr. Trudell had already made a name for himself as an
effective champion of his people, decrying the indignities they had
suffered for more than a century at the hands of the American
government.

In November 1972, he was among the leaders of a group
that occupied the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington, demanding the
enforcement of historical treaties that granted Native Americans
sovereignty over their land.

Perhaps most famously, in 1969, he
joined an occupation of Alcatraz Island, home of the former prison in
San Francisco Bay, arguing that the terms of an old treaty gave American
Indians the right to unused federal land.

The occupiers, calling
themselves Indians of All Tribes, held the island for 19 months,
demanding that they be given the right to develop it as a cultural and
education center. Mr. Trudell, then in his 20s, emerged as the group’s
spokesman, frequently delivering a broadcast called “Radio Free
Alcatraz” and speaking at news conferences.

Rejecting a
government proposal that the island be turned into a park with “maximum
Indian qualities,” Mr. Trudell said: “We will no longer be museum
pieces, tourist attractions and politicians’ playthings. There will be
no park on this island because it changes the whole meaning of what we
are here for.”

The F.B.I. compiled a substantial file on him.

In
1979, Mr. Trudell burned an American flag on the steps of the F.B.I.
building in Washington, saying that the flag had been desecrated by the
government’s behavior toward American Indians and other minorities, and
that burning was the appropriate way to dispose of a desecrated flag.

The
next day, his home in Nevada burned to the ground. The fire killed his
pregnant wife, Tina Manning, who was also an activist, as well as their
three children and Ms. Manning’s mother.

An investigation by the
Bureau of Indian Affairs found that the fire was an accident. But some
viewed the inquiry as perfunctory, and its findings were questioned by
an investigator hired by Mr. Trudell, who suspected the fire had been
deliberately set.

“I don’t want to say that the F.B.I. kills innocent kids and children,” Lindsey Manning, a cousin of Tina Manning, said in “Trudell,” an acclaimed 2005 documentary film by Heather Rae. “I just don’t want to say that. But you never know. You never know.”

The film asserted that the cause of the fire had never been established.

John
Francis Trudell was born in Omaha on Feb. 15, 1946, and grew up partly
there and partly on a reservation near the South Dakota border. His
father, Clifford Trudell, was a Santee Dakota; his mother, the former
Ricarda Almanza, was of Mexican-Indian descent. She died when John was a
boy.

Mr. Trudell dropped out of high school and served in the
Navy during the Vietnam War. Afterward, he moved to Southern California,
where he studied radio and communications at a community college before
joining the Indians of All Tribes group on Alcatraz.

Mr. Trudell
began to distance himself from the American Indian Movement after the
fire at his house, and in the 1980s, he turned to writing. He published
several volumes of poetry, including “Stickman” and “Lines From a Mined
Mind,” often writing in protest of corporate power and government
oppression. He also recorded spoken-word albums
accompanied by traditional Native American music as well as
contemporary pop. His latest album, “Wazi’s Dream,” was released this
year.

The recordings earned him admirers in the music world, including Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne and Kris Kristofferson.

Mr.
Trudell also acted in feature films, including “Thunderheart” (1992),
with Sam Shepard and Val Kilmer, in which he played a character drawn
from a crucial figure in the events leading to Wounded Knee; and “Smoke
Signals” (1998), based on Sherman Alexie’s poignantly comic novel about
growing up on a reservation.

Mr. Trudell’s first marriage, to
Fenicia Ordonez, ended in divorce. He is survived by a brother, Roger,
and several children and grandchildren. Ms. Miller, his estate’s
trustee, declined to say specifically where Mr. Trudell lived in Santa
Clara County.

“If this is the land of the free,” Mr. Trudell said
during the occupation of Alcatraz, summarizing the issue that would
propel his life and work from then on, “we want to know why we don’t
have the respect and dignity that all free men are accorded by other
free men.”

Muhammad Ali,
one of the most famous athletes in American history and a convert to
Islam in the 1960s, returned to the public spotlight Wednesday night to
say that political leaders had a responsibility to foster understanding
about his religion.His comments came after Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican presidential candidate, stoked anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States by, among other things, suggesting that foreign Muslims be barred from traveling to the country. Trump has also questioned President Obama’s affirmation that Muslim Americans are some of the nation’s sports heroes.

In a statement delivered to NBC,
Ali did not speak about Trump directly but addressed his message to
“Presidential Candidates Proposing to Ban Muslim Immigration to the
United States.”

“We as Muslims have to stand up to those who use
Islam to advance their own personal agenda,” Ali said in the statement.
“They have alienated many from learning about Islam.”In February 1964,
shortly after winning the heavyweight title — and before fully
converting and changing his name from Cassius Clay — Ali, speaking to
reporters, defended his choice to participate in the Nation of Islam
movement.“I go to a black Muslim meeting and what do I see? I see that
there’s no smoking and no drinking and their women wear dresses down to
the floor,” Ali said at the time. “And then I come out on the street and
you tell me I shouldn’t go in there. Well, there must be something in
there if you don’t want me to go in there.”

American Muslims have
often faced bumpy paths in sports. Ali stoked enormous controversy in
1967 when he said he would refuse to serve in the Army because of his
Muslim beliefs. One of his remarks — “I ain’t got no quarrel with them
Viet Cong” — became famous in the 1960s.

“He
became a Muslim in 1964 after defeating Sonny Liston for the title,”
Morton Susman, a United States attorney, said at the time. “In my
opinion, his trouble started with that — this tragedy and the loss of
his title can be traced to that.”

Ali’s case went to the Supreme
Court, which in 1971 reversed his conviction and agreed that he was
deserving of conscientious objector status. After three years out of the
ring, he returned to fighting and eventually regained his title.

“You can’t be for God and for oppression,” he said. “It’s
clear in the Quran: Islam is the only way. I don’t criticize those who
stand, so don’t criticize me for sitting. I won’t waver from my
decision.”

After a brief suspension, he worked out a compromise
that he would stand during the anthem but look downward and recite a
Muslim prayer.

But Ali has long been the most visible Muslim
athlete in the United States, even more so since Islam has become a
political issue.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Ali appeared on a celebrity telethon
to defend his religion. He pleaded for acceptance and addressed the
threat of terrorism, saying that terrorists killing in the name of Islam
were wrong.

“People recognize me for being a boxer and a man of
truth,” he said. “I wouldn’t be here to represent Islam if it was really
like the terrorists make us look.”

Fourteen years later, Ali’s statement echoed his original comments.

“Speaking
as someone who has never been accused of political correctness, I
believe that our political leaders should use their position to bring
understanding about the religion of Islam and clarify that these
misguided murderers have perverted people’s views on what Islam really
is,” he said in his statement.

In the days since Trump questioned Obama’s statement
that Muslims were among America’s sporting heroes, people responded on
the Internet by compiling lists of Muslim athletes. The list included
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a six-time N.B.A. champion who on Wednesday suggested on Time.com that Trump’s comments were more in line with Islamic State rhetoric than with a leading presidential candidate.

The Winston-Salem police say that four white officers are on
administrative duty after a black man who was subdued with pepper spray
died in custody. The authorities said that the prisoner, Travis Page,
31, became unresponsive after he was taken into custody Wednesday night
after a struggle with officers. He died at a hospital. The police said
that they responded to a report of a gun being fired and found a handgun
in Mr. Page’s possession. Family members said that Mr. Page had health
problems, including high blood pressure and bronchitis. Two of the
officers have been with the department for 20 years or more; the others,
one year and three years. The State Bureau of Investigation is handling
the case.

KABUL, Afghanistan — The number of those killed in an American airstrike that destroyed the Doctors Without Borders
hospital in the northern city of Kunduz was much higher than previously
thought, the medical organization announced Saturday.The death toll
“has been confirmed to be at least 42 people,” the group, also known by
its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières, said in a news release. Previously, the United States military and the United Nations had put the death toll at 30.

In a separate statement issued on Saturday, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan announced the preliminary findings of
its own investigation into civilian casualties in Kunduz, which was
overrun by the Taliban at the end of September, and was the scene of
bitter fighting for more than two weeks until the insurgents were forced
out, purportedly by Afghan forces but with substantial help from
American Special Operations forces and heavy American airstrikes.

According
to the figures compiled by the United Nations, 289 civilians were
killed from Sept. 28 to Oct. 13 in the Kunduz fighting, and 559 were
wounded. “The vast majority of these casualties resulted from ground
fighting that could not be attributed solely to one party,” the
statement said.

Doctors Without Borders said the revised death
toll was arrived at after an exhaustive investigation by the
organization that included combing through the rubble of the hospital to
find further human remains, interviewing family members of missing
victims and crosschecking with other hospitals. The group said it concluded that the death toll was “at least 42 people”: 14 staff members, 24 patients and four relatives of patients.

“Although
determining the death toll has been extremely difficult in the chaos of
the facility’s wreckage following the attack, extensive efforts have
been undertaken to identify those who have died,” the group’s statement
said. “As well, additional human remains had been found in the hospital
rubble over the course of the past two months.”

The United States military conceded,
after an internal investigation, that the Oct. 3 airstrikes on the
hospital were a mistake. It blamed human error and mechanical and
systems failures, and it said that action would be taken against an
unspecified number of American servicemen. However, the military did not
release the report of the investigation, and so far there has been no
announcement of what disciplinary or other actions, if any, have been
being taken against those deemed culpable.

Doctors Without Borders has demanded an international investigation of the airstrikes that would be carried out under the Geneva Conventions,
asserting that the military’s own investigation would inevitably be
biased and lack credibility. But such an investigation could only take
place if both Afghanistan and the United States consented to it.

Senior
Afghan officials have continued to insist, in the absence of any
credible evidence and even in contradiction of the United States
military’s findings, that the hospital had been used by the Taliban
during the fighting. The United States has so far declined to support an
independent inquiry.

On Wednesday, Doctors Without Borders presented a petition
to the White House signed by 547,000 people calling on President Obama
to agree to the independent investigation. “Only a full accounting by an
independent, international body can restore our confidence in the
commitments of the United States to uphold the laws of war, which
prohibit such attacks on hospitals in the strongest terms,” said Jason
Cone, the group’s executive director in the United States.

The
aerial bombardment by both American and Afghan forces killed at least
nine other civilians, in addition to those killed at the hospital,
according to the United Nations report, which did not incorporate the
latest death toll announced by Doctors Without Borders. Even with the
United Nations’ s lower figures, more than a tenth of all civilians
killed in Kunduz during that period of fighting died in the hospital
attack.

The United Nations’ report was by
comparison only mildly critical of the United States military, saying
that it had not responded to requests for information about what had
happened. Instead, it was told by the military that information would
come from various ongoing internal inquiries. The United Nations noted
that so far, the complete reports of those investigations had not been
made public.

In a separate development, elite Afghan police units on Saturday brought to an end an overnight siege
of a residential annex to a building adjoining the Spanish Embassy in
the diplomatic quarter of Kabul, killing the last of three attackers.

Seven
people were killed, in addition to the three attackers, and at least
seven others were wounded, Afghan officials said. Four Afghan police
officers, two foreign citizens and an Afghan electrician who worked at
the guesthouse were killed, said Fraidoon Obaidy, head of criminal
investigation for the Kabul police.

The two foreigners killed were Spanish police officers, according to a statement from the Spanish Interior Ministry. It was the most deadly attack on a Western embassy here in many years.

It
took so long to subdue the Taliban attackers, who entered the building
after detonating a car bomb, because the authorities wanted to take care
to minimize civilian casualties, said Abdul Basiur Mujahed, a spokesman
for the Kabul police.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the
attack. Zabihullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the insurgents, said on his
Twitter account, “A guesthouse of invaders was targeted.”

DANNEMORA, N.Y. — Inmates who have served time at the Clinton Correctional Facility here tell of being taken aside by a sergeant soon after they arrive and given a warning: Cross the guards, and bad things can happen.And they do. Inmates describe being ambushed by guards and beaten, taunted with racial slurs, and kept out of sight, in solitary confinement, until the injuries inflicted on them have healed enough to avoid arousing suspicion.

One story in particular has been passed along over the last few years as a kind of parable of brutality and injustice on the cellblocks. Leonard Strickland was a prisoner with schizophrenia who got into an argument with guards, and ended up dead.

In the inmates’ telling, the guards got away with murder, ganging up on Mr. Strickland and beating him so viciously that he could barely move. The guards deny this, saying they acted only in self-defense and did what was necessary to subdue an out-of-control prisoner.But what came next is indisputable. In a security video obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Strickland is seen in handcuffs, barely conscious and being dragged along the floor by officers, while a prison nurse standing close by does nothing. Even as he lies face down on the floor, near death, guards can be heard shouting, “Stop resisting.”

By the time an ambulance arrived, medical records described Mr. Strickland’s body as cold to the touch and covered in cuts and bruises, with blood flowing from his ears.

The 2010 case fits a troubling pattern of savage beatings by corrections officers at prisons across New York State and a department that rarely holds anyone accountable, issues that have been highlighted in a series of articles over the past year by The Times and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization.

Mr. Strickland’s death was only briefly noted in local newspapers, and probably would have been forgotten by all but the officers and inmates. But the escape of two murderers from Clinton in June attracted extraordinary attention to the maximum-security prison, and details about its inner workings, long held secret, have started to reach outsiders.

Investigations by The Times uncovered the serious security lapses that made the escape possible, as well as beatings by guards during the interrogations that followed. State officials have said they are investigating the abuse claims, but there is little to indicate any results will come of it.

The internal affairs unit of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has long been mired in dysfunction. Its former director of operations is awaiting trial on charges of sexually harassing several subordinates.

Officials with the State Police and the local district attorney’s office could not recall the last time charges had been brought against an officer at Clinton for excessive force, if ever, though inmates have filed scores of brutality lawsuits in recent years. The United States attorney for the Northern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over nearly half of the state’s 54 prisons, has not brought a brutality case involving a state corrections officer in at least five years, according to a spokesman.

In the Strickland case, the police and the district attorney concluded there had been no criminal wrongdoing, though two state prison watchdog agencies, the State Commission of Correction and the Commission on Quality Care and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities, issued highly critical reports documenting numerous misleading and false statements by officers.

The dozen or so officers and medical personnel identified in the investigations either still work at Clinton or other state prisons, or were promoted or retired with full benefits. In the years since the Strickland case, several of them have again been accused of brutality by inmates.

The Times was able to piece together the story behind Mr. Strickland’s death by reviewing internal corrections department reports, log book entries and statements by the officers involved, along with the autopsy report and records by paramedics and emergency room doctors. Separately, six inmate witnesses were tracked down and interviewed at four prisons around the state.

The Times was also able to obtain a copy of a hand-held security video recorded by an officer that documented the last 45 minutes of Mr. Strickland’s life. It was made public last month, after the newspaper petitioned the court and argued for its release in the course of a lawsuit filed by the Strickland family. Usually these suits are dismissed or settled before they reach trial. But the family’s decision to push ahead with the case compelled the officers involved to testify in court several weeks ago, and made public evidence that would normally be off limits.

Accountability is typically elusive in these kinds of cases. Officers rarely speak up about wrongdoing for fear of reprisals from their fellow guards and will lie to protect them, current and former corrections officials said. They are also shielded by a union that even high-ranking members of the corrections department acknowledge holds tremendous sway over what goes on inside the prisons.

A corrections department spokesman said officials could not comment on the Strickland case because of the pending litigation, and the acting commissioner, Anthony J. Annucci, declined a request for an interview.

At a news conference in September, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo dismissed the possibility that officer brutality in the state prison system was a serious problem, suggesting that force is sometimes necessary to keep order. “They have to make sure they get a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they get hurt,” Mr. Cuomo said.The Bottom of the Stairs

Among the state’s 17 maximum security prisons, Clinton has a reputation for being particularly violent. While racial tension is a fact of life in many prisons, inmates say it is especially bad at Clinton, located in this rural area not far from the Canadian border. The prison is the biggest local employer and pays a good wage by regional standards. All but a few of the 950 guards, including those involved in the altercation with Mr. Strickland, are white.

A majority of the inmates, like Mr. Strickland, are black and come from New York City, 300 miles to the south; they say they face a constant barrage of racial slurs.

Two years before Mr. Strickland’s death, another black inmate, Bradley Ceasar, died under similar circumstances.

Mr. Ceasar, 52, who was developmentally disabled, got into a confrontation with guards on Aug. 11, 2008, and within hours was dead. Officers and a nurse ignored his repeated pleas for help and provided no medical care, investigators said. An autopsy later determined that his ribs had been so badly broken that his lungs could not inflate properly, and he suffocated.

The department determined that the officers’ actions were appropriate, and in the end, the only person disciplined was a prison nurse, Beth Farnan, who was fined $500. She remains employed at Clinton.

Like Mr. Ceasar, Mr. Strickland was not known as a violent inmate. While many of the prisoners at Clinton are serving sentences for murder, rape and other brutal crimes, Mr. Strickland had been convicted of criminal possession of a weapon.

He had not committed a serious disciplinary infraction during his previous four and a half years in prison, according to state records. At the trial, Sgt. Betsy Whelden-Berglund said that for six months in 2009 she had overseen the cellblock where he was housed and had had no problems with him.

Mr. Strickland, however, did have a history of behaving erratically. By summer 2010, he had stopped taking medication for his schizophrenia, according to prison records. At various times, his mother, Selena Strickland, said, he claimed that he had had a baby, that he was God, that he was a millionaire and that he was married to Beyoncé. That August, when his mother last visited him, she said, “he was talking out of his head.”

On the morning of Oct. 3, 2010, the 44-year-old Mr. Strickland was upset that a guard had confiscated a plastic hand mirror, according to several accounts. Not long after returning to the cellblock from breakfast, he got into a disagreement with an officer.

From this point on, the stories told by guards and inmate witnesses diverge widely.

In the guards’ version, described at trial, Mr. Strickland argued with an officer, Casey Strong, after being ordered to gather his possessions and go downstairs to be locked into a new cell.

Among inmates, Officer Strong was considered trouble. He had a history of violent confrontations. Over an eight-year period he had been injured during fights with inmates and gone on disability leave three times, he testified at the November trial. He said that he had retired last summer, at 36, and was unemployed and collecting disability insurance.

Officer Strong asserted in his trial testimony that Mr. Strickland punched him in the shoulder during the dispute. To defend himself, Officer Strong said, he punched Mr. Strickland twice in the head and once in the chest. He said he grabbed the inmate in a bear hug, and they struggled and both fell down the concrete stairs.

Officer Strong was able to stop himself halfway down, he said, but Mr. Strickland fell to the bottom. Despite the fall, several officers said, Mr. Strickland was able to jump to his feet and start fighting with a second guard, Cory Liberty. According to the court testimony, Officer Liberty then punched Mr. Strickland several times, while Officer Strong used his baton to hit him in the back and legs repeatedly.

By then nearly two dozen officers, responding to a call for backup, had surrounded Mr. Strickland.

And still he continued to “struggle violently,” Officer Liberty contended. Only when four guards grabbed a limb each and pinned him to the ground was he finally subdued, several testified.

A prison accident report filed shortly after the episode listed only minor injuries to the officers, mostly bruises and pulled muscles. The two guards who had repeatedly punched Mr. Strickland also had swollen right hands. (Another officer later testified at trial that she had suffered broken ribs, but this was not mentioned in medical documents.)

The officers said Mr. Strickland had no visible injuries. Nor, they said, did he ever complain about being hurt.

In interviews, inmates said the guards were lying.

Three — Kevin Goode, Walter Maddox and Frank Povoski — said they witnessed Mr. Strickland being pushed, not falling, down the stairs. And three — Mr. Goode, Mr. Povoski and another inmate who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution — said they saw him lying, badly injured, at the bottom. Two said that after being beaten by several guards, he was dragged away screaming.

Accounts by prisoners are often viewed skeptically. But the six were all interviewed separately; five were serving time in four different prisons and the sixth had been released. Their versions differed in some details. One said the events unfolded after they came back from breakfast; another said it was after recreation. One prisoner said Mr. Strickland was handcuffed before he was pushed down the stairs; another said it was after.

But the basic story the men told was the same: Mr. Strickland was pushed down a flight of stairs, and then beaten nearly to death by a large group of guards.

Mr. Maddox, whose cell was on the same tier as Mr. Strickland’s, watched events unfold from about 25 feet away, he said. He recalled Mr. Strickland’s making a sound as though he was terrified when he was shoved down the stairs.

Mr. Goode was head porter on the cellblock, and he said he was buffing the floor at the foot of the stairway that morning. He said that before Mr. Strickland was pushed, an officer yelled a racial slur. As Mr. Strickland fell downward, Mr. Goode said, his skull hit the concrete steps several times. At the bottom he pulled himself into a tight fetal position, as about 10 officers took turns kicking him in the head and the ribs, Mr. Goode said.

They “beat this kid to zero,” he said.

Mr. Povoski, who watched from a floor above, said Mr. Strickland lay so still he assumed he was dead.‘Is He Breathing?’

After a physical encounter with guards, inmates, as a matter of standard practice, are taken to the prison emergency room to be examined.

When Mr. Strickland arrived, the officers said, he resisted them, disobeying their orders, refusing to stand or walk, and repeatedly kicking them. They testified that they responded professionally, transporting Mr. Strickland from the prison emergency room to the mental health ward, and providing appropriate first aid.

The officers’ sworn statements bear little resemblance to the images captured that morning on the 45-minute video.

Investigators from the commissions of both correction and quality care reviewed the video and wrote reports that were highly critical of the guards’ response, as well as the medical care provided by the prison nurse. “Strickland did not resist the officers, nor was he out of control,” the quality care commission report said.

As the video begins, Mr. Strickland is seen wearing white boxer shorts and a brown T-shirt, torn across his left shoulder. A large, purplish bruise is visible. He is cuffed from behind and pressed against a cinder block wall by two officers, Terry James and Kevin Trombley.

“Inmate Strickland, you’re going to comply with a strip frisk, do you understand me?” said Sgt. Steven Sweeney, who was supervising.

Mr. Strickland looks unstable on his feet. His head is down. Over the next few minutes, he appears to grow weaker, at one point slumping over and trying to hold his head up with his right arm. It seems only the guards are keeping him from falling over.

The lawyer for the Strickland family, John Seebold, contended that at this point in the video the officers were acting as if he was resisting to justify their brutal treatment of him earlier.

After five minutes, while Mr. Strickland seems barely conscious, the officers decide to take him upstairs to the mental health ward and give him an injection to calm him down.

There is a gurney a few feet away, but Officers James and Trombley grab Mr. Strickland by his arms, which are still handcuffed, and lift them until they are hyperextended behind his head. Then they drag him out of the room. (In Sergeant Sweeney’s subsequent report, he wrote, “I directed the officers to assist him to the elevator using professional techniques.”)

They drag him onto the elevator, take it to the third floor, then drag him off, dropping him face down in a hallway, still handcuffed. (“I again directed staff to assist inmate off the elevator in which staff complied,” Sergeant Sweeney wrote.)

While Mr. Strickland is left lying on the ground for more than two minutes, motionless, several officers step over him.

At 9 minutes 15 seconds into the video, someone is heard asking, “Is he breathing?”

For the next 35 minutes, as nurses and officers perform CPR, Mr. Strickland is unconscious and unmoving, yet remains handcuffed. (Asked at trial why the handcuffs were not removed, Sergeant Sweeney answered, “Medical’s involved, but he’s still a disciplinary problem for me.”)

The video concludes at 10:15 a.m., as Mr. Strickland is loaded into the back of an ambulance and the doors close behind him.Still Handcuffed

State investigators were scathing in their assessment of the medical response by the prison nurse, Robert Fitzgerald. A report by the State Commission of Correction said Mr. Fitzgerald “showed complete disregard of the obvious signs of a nonresponsive inmate.”

On the video, Mr. Fitzgerald is seen standing nearby and doing nothing as Mr. Strickland collapses onto the emergency room floor, and is dragged to the elevator.

Instead of riding in the elevator along with the officers to provide care for Mr. Strickland, Mr. Fitzgerald took the stairs. Again he is seen on the video off to the side, watching for nearly three minutes while Mr. Strickland lies motionless in the hallway of the mental health clinic, near death.

When asked during a deposition why he did not intervene sooner, Mr. Fitzgerald said he had to wait for Sergeant Sweeney to determine that the inmate was no longer a safety risk.

But when Sergeant Sweeney was asked during the trial why it had taken him so long to give Mr. Fitzgerald permission to treat the inmate, he said that the decision on when to intervene was Mr. Fitzgerald’s.

In reality, those present were doing a poor job, according to the medical experts who testified for the plaintiff and the defense at the trial. Because Mr. Strickland was handcuffed from behind the entire time, his back was not flat against the floor, compromising the effectiveness of the CPR, both doctors testified. And instead of continuously applying CPR, the staff took numerous breaks.

Not until the ambulance crew arrived, 30 minutes after Mr. Fitzgerald first noted that Mr. Strickland had stopped breathing, did he suggest removing the handcuffs.

“Is there any way we can get those cuffs off the back of him?” Mr. Fitzgerald asked an ambulance worker.

“I don’t think he’s going to go anywhere,” she answered.

The ambulance arrived at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital at 10:40 a.m., and at 10:45 Mr. Strickland was formally pronounced dead. A Curious Diagnosis

The medical report by the ambulance crew detailed extensive injuries: bruises all over Mr. Strickland’s body, including his forehead, head, left cheek and shoulders; a missing tooth on the upper left side of his mouth; blood and clear fluid coming from his ears; bloody abrasions on both knees; and markings suggesting that something may have been placed around his neck.

The autopsy by the county coroner concluded that Mr. Strickland had died of cardiorespiratory arrest due to cardiac ischemia, meaning his heart could not get sufficient oxygen and ceased to function.

At the trial, the medical expert for the Strickland family, Dr. Alan Schechter, an emergency room physician at Montefiore Medical Center, testified that based on the autopsy results he believed Mr. Strickland died when his heart gave out from “stress induced by the altercation.”

“If he did not have the stressful events, he would not have had a heart attack,” said Dr. Schechter, who handles quality care reviews of emergency room deaths at Montefiore.

Had Mr. Strickland received the proper medical care, the doctor testified, “more likely than not he would have survived.”

Dr. Donald Doynow, an attending physician in emergency medicine at St. Peters Hospital in Albany, was the medical expert for the state. He testified that the coroner’s autopsy results were incorrect, and that the inmate had instead died from a condition known as Excited Delirium Syndrome.

It is a controversial diagnosis, viewed with skepticism by many in the medical profession. The syndrome is not listed in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, nor is it recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association.

Dr. Doynow said studies had found that among the groups most vulnerable to Excited Delirium Syndrome were males who suffered from mental illness and stopped taking their medication. One of the most prominent symptoms, he said, is the loss of the ability to feel pain, which could explain how a prisoner might be able to repeatedly resist the physical restraints applied by corrections officers.

Dr. Doynow said the syndrome could bring about cardiac arrest.

When pressed about the syndrome, Dr. Doynow, who has been practicing medicine since 1988, testified that he himself had never seen a case of it.Seeking Answers

At Clinton there is a committee of inmates designated to meet regularly with the prison management team as well as uniformed officers, to discuss issues of concern. Typically, the topics might include the handling of proceeds from bottle returns, or the distribution of stamps.

Not at the meeting held on Nov. 22, 2010. Mr. Strickland’s death, and brutality at the prison, were at the top of the inmates’ agenda.

Committee members complained that violence by the guards was out of hand. They asked that the administration provide them with a copy of the Strickland autopsy report and requested an investigation into the alleged beating of an inmate, Thomas Murphy, who they said had been badly injured 20 minutes before Mr. Strickland, by guards “wearing steel toe boots.”

Among the administrators present at the meeting were the prison’s superintendent, Thomas LaValley, and two of his deputies, along with Sergeant Sweeney.

According to the minutes of the meeting, the prison administrators responded that “all allegations of abuse are investigated,” and “when the autopsy is completed it will be public knowledge.”

Mr. Povoski, who was vice president of the inmates’ committee at the time, said the autopsy was never received and brutality at the prison continued, unabated.A Brutal Legacy

In the years since, several officers involved in the Strickland case have been named in lawsuits filed by other inmates alleging brutality.

A suit filed last year by one inmate, Moshe Cinque Canty, claimed that a group of officers, including Sergeant Sweeney, handcuffed him, beat him and dragged him around by his dreadlocks. The officers shouted racial slurs, the suit claims. One guard yelled for the officers to pull the dreadlocks from Mr. Canty’s head and “choke the nigger with them,” the suit says.

According to Mr. Canty, who is serving time for attempted murder and robbery, when the beating was over Sergeant Sweeney told the others to straighten up their clothes, saying, “We have to look professional.”

In a legal filing, the officers denied all of Mr. Canty’s accusations.

Another pending suit from last year names Sergeant Sweeney along with Kevin Trombley, the officer who handcuffed Mr. Strickland and helped drag him to the elevator.

Edwin Banks, who is serving time for drug possession, said in the suit that Officer Trombley had repeatedly harassed him about his dreadlocks. One morning, after breakfast, according to Mr. Banks, Officer Trombley, Sergeant Sweeney and others severely beat him. Mr. Banks claimed that the sergeant then had the guards carry him by his limbs to the infirmary, with one officer grabbing his shirt collar so tightly that he passed out.

Lawyers for the officers have not yet filed a response to the accusations.

In each of these cases, inmates said they had filed grievances with the prison administration and written letters to Albany, including to the governor. Nothing came of them.

Within two weeks of Mr. Strickland’s death, several inmates said, they were questioned by the State Police and internal affairs investigators with the corrections department. Most said they did not know the names of the officers involved but would have been able to make identifications if they saw them again.

The Times has interviewed more than a dozen inmate witnesses in connection with several brutality cases in recent months, and not one had been shown photos of suspect officers by state investigators, they said.

Partly because the video evidence in the Strickland case was so compelling, investigators with the corrections department referred the case to the State Bureau of Labor Relations for possible departmental disciplinary action.

Nothing happened. The state agency that oversees licensing of medical professionals did not pursue the matter either.

The State Police concluded “that no criminal conduct of others contributed” to the death, and the Clinton County district attorney declined to present the case to a grand jury.

The officers and the nurse involved either continue to work for the corrections department or have retired with their full pensions. At the trial, Sergeant Sweeney said he left the department last May after 33 years of service, and is now working as a rural mail carrier.

The civil case is not likely to be resolved any time soon. Unless the parties settle first, the judge is expected to take up to a year to render his decision.

At a hearing this month in Albany, Daniel O’Donnell, the chairman of the State Assembly prisons committee, called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to monitor the state prison system. The meeting was adjourned, until an unspecified date, because the corrections department declined to testify.

During the civil trial, Mr. Strickland’s mother, a former nursing home aide who is 70 years old, testified that she used to try to make the six-hour bus trip from Brooklyn to visit her son once a month, but since he died she had moved to Georgia.

She was asked how she learned of her son’s death. She said a prison chaplain had called a minister that he knew in Brooklyn, who came to her house. She said that the next day, she phoned a counselor at Clinton to ask if there was any information about how her son had died. The counselor, she said, told her “no, because it was under investigation.”

There was no funeral, Mrs. Strickland told the court. “I had lack of funds.”

According to the death certificate, her son was buried on Oct. 15, 2010, in the Clinton Correctional Cemetery, a mile outside the prison wall.

Indianapolis police officers shot and killed a man on Saturday after he lunged at an officer with a knife following an unsuccessful effort to subdue him using nonlethal force, the department said in a statement.

The killing of the man, whose identity had not been released, was met with anger by some residents in the neighborhood, who briefly confronted police officers and smashed the windshield of a police car, The Indianapolis Star reported.

The statement from the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department said officers responding to a report of a suicidal person shortly before 11:30 a.m. Saturday found a knife-wielding man who ignored orders to drop his weapon.

They used a Taser but it “appeared to have no effect on him,” according to the statement. An officer then tackled the man but was unable to wrestle the knife from his hands. At that point, two officers fired at the man. Emergency medical workers pronounced him dead at the scene.

People who had gathered near where the shooting took place, which appeared in a cellphone video shot by a bystander to be a residential neighborhood, responded angrily to the shooting, cursing and screaming at police officers and smashing the windshield of a police car after a brief confrontation.

Some people in the crowd appeared to have known the man.

“He had a mental illness,” one person in the crowd shouted, according to The Star.

The police department said the officers involved in Saturday’s shooting had been placed on paid administrative leave pending an investigation.

Lt. Richard Riddle, a spokesman for the police department, defended the officers’ decision to use lethal force, saying they “had no other choice.”

“We have homicides, we have stabbings, we have serious violent offenses that occur daily in this city via the use of a knife,” Lieutenant Riddle said at a news conference. “So a knife is deemed to be a deadly weapon in any vernacular and our officers were confronted with an individual who was armed with a knife and who refused to drop it.”

He estimated there had been 20 officer-involved shootings in the city so far in 2015, including nine or 10 fatalities.

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*---------*

12) California: Civil Rights Suit Filed Over Man Shot to Death by Police

The mother of a young black man shot dead by the San Francisco police
filed a federal civil rights lawsuit Friday, saying officers needlessly
opened fire in a shooting captured on video.
Five San Francisco police officers responding to a report of a stabbing
killed Mario Woods, 26, on Dec. 2 when he refused commands to drop an
eight-inch knife. Two video clips of the episode have circulated online,
angering community leaders and activists. During community meetings
this week, some have called for Chief Greg Suhr to resign and for the
officers who fired their guns to be charged criminally. Mr. Suhr has
said that the police opened fire when it appeared that Mr. Woods was
raising the knife and approaching one of the officers. John Burris, a
lawyer representing Gwendolyn Woods, the mother, disputed that account
Friday and showed a video clip not previously seen publicly. He said Mr. Woods never raised his hands.